Thursday, July 10, 2014

Magic wand making

We had our first dressing up day at nursery. I feel this is the beginning of something. I am quite into the idea of not spending money on all this if possible, except if it's in order to make something from scratch. I did have a look at all the Disney princess dresses in ASDA and secretly think how amazing I would have felt in one of those, but NO, we are going to with hold if possible. Famous last words...

So it was superheros and princess' day at nursery, neither of which Penelope has any concept of, but she does get what a ballerina is so I thought we'd just do that instead. My neighbour had given us a lovely handmade satin tutu so we didn't need to buy anything! But I thought I would use this opportunity to make this great magic wand.

I didn't understand how to print out the star shape at the right size, it kept coming out small so I just drew up my own pattern really based on, well, not very much. It worked out fine though.

I also didn't bother with the bow as Penelope would just have ripped it off. I just sewed neatly round the edge and it looked fine. My eyes are also a bit smaller but they were all I had. They are probably easy to pull off and swallow but at least they are small enough to just go straight through! Not bad for an hour's work in front of the TV.

A great tutorial in all. I love the loop on the end for hanging it up, what a good idea!
The fabric is plain white brushed cotton for the star, a left over scrap from a tescos pillowcase. The black and white candy stripe is a poplin from a new website I found called Calico Laine. It's annoying really, as it's the kind of thing they sell in my local craft shop, but I can only get there on certain days so I just ordered the stripe off the web. It was the same sort of price and the site has lots of stuff. I am all in for fabrics that are around £5 a metre. I was so dispirited by the price of jersey fabrics the other day. I mean honestly, it's cheaper by far just to buy clothes then to buy jersey at £18 a metre. Where is all the £5 a metre fabric these days? Where are the bargains? Sigh

Here's a really rubbish picture of the ballerina waiting to be let in at nursery. She basically just dragged the wand around with her all day, but at least it wasn't a stick wand she cold whack other children with. Poor thing is looking a bit bent already so maybe it was responsible for some soft violence, but it survived the day which is good.